I‘m beginning to see more and more signs of the pathetic state of education these days. Either an awful lot of the Generation Obama kids were asleep during their Civics classes or they all hate the Constitution. Which amendment will this Constitutional Law Lecturer (on leave) and his minions dismiss next?

The First Amendment has always been my favorite. I’m particularly fond of exercising free speech and avoiding other people’s religions. I’m also all about peaceful assemblage (ask my local bartender) and petioning the government with grievances (ask my Senator she undoubtedly has a file cabinet of letters from me). The last few days, exercising free speech has been more difficult for some folks like me. This is because Senator Obama’s minions are more concerned with the appearance of unity than adherence to the Constitution.

“Did Google use its network of online services to silence critics of Barack Obama? That was the question buzzing on a corner of the blogosphere over the last few days, after several anti-Obama bloggers were unable to update their sites, which are hosted on Google’s Blogger service.”

There is much circumstantial evidence that some Obama supporters were trying to take down anti-Obama blog sites during Unitystock. There have been active threads and posts on this topic many places. I’ve been particularly interested because I do value the Constitution and because many of my friends and their right to free speech were silenced by google’s heavy hand. One of my friend’s GeekLove was a target. She was interviewed by many folks. It seems Obamatrons believe it was warranted. I gleaned this comment off of a No Quarter’s Thread.

Sometimes these bloggers would send out stupid chain e-mails or encourage their supporters to. Usually in support of Hillary.

They deserve to get dropped by Google!

I just want to stick a sic all over this comment, Mort. First, fragmented sentences are grammatically uncool. Also, telling folks they don’t have a right to support candidates or not support candidates in their own special way is just Unamerican uncool. Please go ask your civics teacher for a refresher course on the first amendment. Once you’re done with that, go find a good English teacher, you need one.

There are just many, many things wrong with shutting down sites during ‘unity’ week. First,well, it creates disunity. Second, it appears that you’re forcing unity. Third, well, again let’s get back to that constitution. You’re denying some one their right to free speech.

There was also denial of freedom of assembly. Obama campaign staff actively tried to remove protesters and their signs from the ‘unity’ marketing site. There are first hand accounts (and video) of Obama campaign staff both removing the right to peaceful assembly which is also an important part of the First Amendment but also trying to take the signs of those wishing to express disunity. Oh, that inconvenient first amendment. Check the video and threads on Riverdaughter’s The Confluence (http://riverdaughter.wordpress.com/2008/06/29/unity-through-purge/).

Then there’s the Obama shuffle concerning the Second Amendment. Does he or doesn’t he support the right to bear arms with restrictions, no restrictions, or some restrictions. Well, like many Obama positions, it depends on the day you ask him. This from ABC’s Legalities (http://blogs.abcnews.com/legalities/2008/02/obama-and-guns.html).

“There’s been a long standing argument among constitutional scholars about whether the 2nd Amendment referred simply to militias or whether it spoke to an individual right to possess arms,” Obama said. “I think the latter is the better argument. There is an individual right to bear arms, but it is subject to common-sense regulation just like most of our rights are subject to common-sense regulation.” Watch Obama’s comments HERE.

He declined, just as the Bush Administration did, to take a position on whether the DC gun ban violates the 2nd Amendment. He said instead that states and cities should have broad latitude to regulate guns—even if the Constitution guarantees an individual right to own them.

“The city of Chicago has gun laws, so does Washington, DC,” Obama said. “The notion that somehow local jurisdictions can’t initiate gun safety laws to deal with gang bangers and random shootings on the street isn’t borne out by our Constitution.”

Now that sure sounds like someone who thinks the handgun bans would be a reasonable restriction under the 2nd Amendment. However there is this quote too from the same source.

“A day after the tragic shootings at NIU, Barack Obama has revealed that he thinks the 2nd Amendment protects an individual’s right to own a gun.

That sounds surprising—and certainly not what you’d expect from someone with the Senate’s most liberal voting record”

Okay, this is the same article. Can some one tell me which version of the second amendment he just endorsed?

I’m going straight to Daily Kampf for Obama and the Fourth Amendment. I just can’t resist when a cheeto blogger recognizes the way Obama will sell out the constitution for a little peace and harmony in Congress. The Cheeto bloggers love them some Fourth Amendment.

“If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”

Important anniversaries are on us. This quote by the second first lady of the United States, Abigail Adams, is as fresh and pertinent as it was when she penned this in a letter to her husband in 1776.

From the birth of this country down to present day, women are the forgotten citizens. When they assert their rights, some war, some other movement, a disease, some other man or even the rights of proto-humans are placed before them and many just fall in. We take care of our gay brothers suffering from aids while the last few states fail to ratify the ERA. We support the abolition movement to free and give rights to Black Americans and votes to black men while we’re considered property way into the 1970s and cannot achieve the vote until 1920. We march. We do all the behind the scene work and organizing. Then, when we ask for the vote, for our place in governing, for our right to lead, we are told that would be expedient to larger movements. This is true of black civil rights movements, labor movements, peace movements or antiwar movements, and the founding of our nation and so ad infinitum.

We are not only approaching our annual celebration of Independence Day. We have come upon the 160th anniversary of the Seneca Falls Convention. The women who met during that July suggested this addition to the Declaration of Independence and penned their own tome the Declaration of Sentiments.

It was signed by a number of women leaders including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott. The first women’s rights conference in the United States Convention was held in Seneca Falls, New York on July 19 and 20, 1848. Few will be celebrating this historic gathering or probably even know of it. One hundred and sixty years after the convention, the equality that Elizabeth Cady Stanton demands still eludes us.

“The eloquent Frederick Douglass, a former slave and now editor of the Rochester North Star, however, swayed the gathering into agreeing to the resolution. At the closing session, Lucretia Mott won approval of a final resolve “for the overthrowing of the monopoly of the pulpit, and for the securing to woman equal participation with men in the various trades, professions and commerce.”

This is the same Frederick Douglass who later threw women under the carriage for Black male suffrage. In 1869, an amendment was proposed to Congress that guarantees “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”

Douglass told women to wait since it was easier to get the proposed amendment through congress if it guaranteed black males the right to vote, but not women. This is exactly what happened. Women had to wait.

For over two centuries, American women had few civil or political rights. Wives had to do what they were told by their husband. Until 1884, a wife was officially listed as one of her husband’s possessions. Women stayed slaves for years after the emancipation proclamation was signed.

When I was at university, I noticed this strange pattern. Every time women say it is our turn to be recognized for all this work and we deserve equal pay, equal rights, and equal respect, men change the subject and put some other movement in between us. If you look through history, many women’s rights movements have been cast aside for peace movements or labor movements and later for civil rights movements that basically favored the rights of gay men or black men.

When asked what the role of women was in the Black Panther Movement, the answer was: “The only role for women in this movement is horizontal.” This continual divide and conquer strategy has left us waiting at bus stops for buses that we are later thrown under. Much of the impetus of the women’s movement in the 70s was distilled to civil rights for gays after Stonewall and the Aids crisis. Gay bashing and Aids struck gay men hard but much of the work and nursing was done by lesbians who abandoned the fight for the ERA and protection of the sanctity of women’s individuality as the religious right’s attempts to water down Roe v. Wade increased the humanity of proto-human life while decreasing that of breathing, living women.

The odd thing is that none of these movements are bad causes. The development of a democratic nation, peace, abolition, Aids research, or suffrage for black men all have merit. The fact that these are ALL good causes is not what bothers me. The larger point to me is that these movements sprung up during active women’s rights movements and suddenly took precedence.

Senator Shirley Chisholm has always been one of my personal heroines and clearly recognized that women’s rights were not a priority for this nation. She was always quick to note that she had experienced more sexism in her life than racism. Please read what this great champion of women’s rights said as she fought for passage of the ERA.

“Mr. Speaker, House Joint Resolution 264, before us today, which provides for equality under the law for both men and women, represents one of the most clear-cut opportunities we are likely to have to declare our faith in the principles that shaped our Constitution. It provides a legal basis for attack on the most subtle, most pervasive, and most institutionalized form of prejudice that exists. Discrimination against women, solely on the basis of their sex, is so widespread that is seems to many persons normal, natural and right.

Legal expression of prejudice on the grounds of religious or political belief has become a minor problem in our society. Prejudice on the basis of race is, at least, under systematic attack. There is reason for optimism that it will start to die with the present, older generation. It is time we act to assure full equality of opportunity to those citizens who, although in a majority, suffer the restrictions that are commonly imposed on minorities, to women.

Whenever women make progress, men step in with some other distraction and create disunity. I see this same pattern today in the Democratic Party ONE HUNDRED and SIXTY years after the Seneca Falls Convention and well over TWO HUNDRED years after Abigail Adams.

Women, please stop and think about this before you donate your time to peace movements, misc. civil rights movements, ANY kind of movement. We are the work horses of all of these movements, yet how many of these movements turn around and provide us ANYTHING but lip service? Think of the DNC, what have they done recently to stop the hemorrhage of reproductive rights? support equal pay laws? stop SEXIST attacks on women candidates? Which women in this system (yes, YOU Nancy Pelosi, yes, You Candy Crowely, yes, you Cindy Sheehan, yes, you Donna Brazille, yes YOU, Governor Sibilius, yes YOU Senator Mary Landrieu, yes you Secretary of State Rice,yes, YOU Gloria Borger, …) will willingly sell out their own sex to be acceptable to the boys and get recognition in a movement or a profession not of our own design whose rules are set up so that we ultimately fail.

Just THINK ABOUT IT when you celebrate this Fourth of July. Look at your daughters, your mothers, your grandmothers, your granddaughters, and the women around you and THINK about it. What movement did I join that stopped me from asking for basic human and democratic rights for women? Think about what happened to Hillary Clinton this primary season and ASK yourselves will you compromise YET again?

From the UK Telegraph:

Bill Clinton says Barack Obama must

‘kiss my ass’ for his support

Bill Clinton is so bitter about Barack Obama’s victory over his wife Hillary that he has told friends the Democratic nominee will have to beg for his wholehearted support.

AP

Bill Clinton is still very bitter that Barack Obama beat his wife Hillary

Mr Obama is expected to speak to Mr Clinton for the first time since he won the nomination in the next few days, but campaign insiders say that the former president’s future campaign role is a “sticking point” in peace talks with Mrs Clinton’s aides.

The Telegraph has learned that the former president’s rage is still so great that even loyal allies are shocked by his patronising attitude to Mr Obama, and believe that he risks damaging his own reputation by his intransigence.

A senior Democrat who worked for Mr Clinton has revealed that he recently told friends Mr Obama could “kiss my ass” in return for his support.

A second source said that the former president has kept his distance because he still does not believe Mr Obama can win the election.

Mr Clinton last week issued a tepid statement, through a spokesman, in which he said he “is obviously committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the next president of the United States “.

Mr Obama was more effusive at his unity event with Mrs Clinton on Friday, speaking fondly of the absent former president, who attended Nelson Mandela’s birthday celebrations in London instead. The candidate told the crowd: “I know how much we need both Bill and Hillary Clinton as a party. They have done so much great work. We need them badly.”

But his aides said he has so far concentrated on cementing relations with Mrs Clinton first. They say they are content to let relations with Mr Clinton thaw gradually.

It has long been known that Mr Clinton is angry at the way his own reputation was tarnished during the primary battle when several of his comments were interpreted as racist.

But his lingering fury has shocked his friends. The Democrat told the Telegraph: “He’s been angry for a while. But everyone thought he would get over it. He hasn’t. I’ve spoken to a couple of people who he’s been in contact with and he is mad as hell.

“He’s saying he’s not going to reach out, that Obama has to come to him. One person told me that Bill said Obama would have to quote kiss my ass close quote, if he wants his support.

“You can’t talk like that about Obama – he’s the nominee of your party, not some house boy you can order around.

“Hillary’s just getting on with it and so should Bill.”

Another Democrat said that despite polls showing Mr Obama with a healthy lead over Republican John McCain, Mr Clinton doesn’t think he can win.

The party strategist, who was allied to one of the early rivals to Mr Obama and the former First Lady, said Mr Clinton was “very unhopeful” about the nominee’s prospects in November.

“Bill Clinton knows the party will unite behind Obama, but he is telling people he doesn’t believe Obama can win round voting groups, especially working-class whites, in the swing states,” the strategist said.

“He just doesn’t think Obama will be able to connect with the voters he needs.”

Joe Klein, the author of Primary Colours, a fictionalised account of Mr Clinton’s 1992 election, who has known the former president for 20 years, said he also heard that he was “very, very bitter”, from people who have spoken with him.

Like this:

While Bill was held captive in some undisclosed area in Europe, Hillary Clinton put on her best Democratic face and blue pantsuit then joined the legions of Obama Fluffers. The big question now remains. How many deadenders are out there that are not buying this unity marketing campaign? It appears the Puma Rebellion is now big enough that all the MSM channels and even news papers are noticing. Yesterday, it was the WaPo. ( http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/26/AR2008062604162.html) Today, even CNN’s Wolf Blitzer got into the act.

Suddenly, those of us in the PUMA roots were being courted for press interview. We know the Obama campaign has poured over our sites and when you look threatening enough, assigns you an Obama Troll of your very own. Our presence has been duely noted, but has not ranked up there enough with sites like No Quarter to achieve multi-trolling.

My mother used to say that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar. This was her way of saying my tongue was way too sharp. Obama’s minions will occasionally try the honey: But Hillary says she’s supporting him! (Yeah, I know, most of them are still probably virgins with lines like that!) ALL the KIDS are DOING IT!!!! But generally, they ramp up shortly to thwapping you with race cards and nasty labels. Then the nasty Republican policies enter the equation. Problem is that John McCain isn’t your standard Republican and Obama has no record to run on. The only thing you have is his word, and gee his word on FISA, public financing, hand gun bans or nonbans, Iran (threat or no threat), and unconditional well, maybe not so unconditional chatting with despots still has me wondering if Obama really knows the meaning of the word truth.

Here’s an NPR editorial. This is the beginning, hopefully, of the Media taking a real hard look at Obama the way that those of us in the PUMA movement have.

So, anyway, there are many folks out there trying to get a headcount on us. Latest thing I saw on statistics said that about 25% of original Hillary supporters are saying no to Obama and perhaps an additional 10% haven’t figured out what to do yet. DNC pundits are pounding home historical trends of chicks coming home to the roost prior to the GE. The Baltimore Sun had a great article on this called “Painful Lessons” by Dr. Lynette Long. She outlines the things she’s learned during the Hillary run for President.

Among the most interesting points in the article is the belief held by the DNC that women will return and vote Obama because they have no place else to go. They think we’ll just go along with their less-than-evil party niche.

“Women voters are not factored into the decision making of the Democratic National Committee. The DNC is concerned that black voters will protest and stay home if Senator Clinton gets the nomination, even though she is the stronger and more electable candidate. But the DNC doesn’t worry that white women, three times larger than the combined black vote, will stay away from the polls if Mrs. Clinton does not get the nomination. They expect the white women of the party to fall in step and vote for Mr. Obama in the general election. ”

This is one chick that is not coming home to roost and I think that the DNC is about to find out that many women have had it with being taken for granted. Twenty-five percent of 18 million voters is a heck of a lot of people. Perhaps this sudden awareness of PUMA and JUST SAY NO DEAL and the huge number of MSM articles is due to the number of women responding with utter frustration to their prior sexist and nasty articles and blogs with “PUMA BOMBS”. This is the PUMA response to the seemingly endless cut and paste political points that have flooded the Hillary blogs and sites for months now. The difference is that we’re not being paid for it. Obama’s blog trolls are salaried. If you watch some of the larger sites (like No Quarter) you can even tell when their shifts change. The message of the day is pretty much the same and their tactics are similar.

PUMA is an interesting rebel movement. I’ve long said that I have felt the stirrings of a new women’s movement only to be belittled with charges that it could neve result in a backlash quasi-championed by the Anti-choice McCain with his surly sexist jokes and insulting names for women, including wife Cindy. However, this belies the major point. It’s a backlash and a protest. No one said that actions rooted in anger and injustice make sense. They are results driven more than dogma driven.

The biggest thing I’ve noticed about the PUMA movement that is ignored by the Obama folks is the incredible amount of diversity in the ranks. It is not a movement of just white women. There are women of many backgrounds as well as many men. I can provide blog names of gay men, African Americans, Asian-Americans, straight men, Americans of middle eastern and Indian descent, Native Americans, and every flavor of Latin/Hispanic American possible. Here’s a link to Riverdaughter’s The Confluence showing a MAWN speaking to Fox and protestors at the unity event that includes (shock!) ANTI WAR PROTESTORS!

There are several things going on with Hillary’s campaign that I’d like to highlight this morning. A lot of the credit for this goes to my friend Heidi Li who has been endless in her support of Hillary’s candidacy. First, let me show you this great Youtube made by my friend GeekLove. After you see it I’d like to encourage you to help Hillary pay off her debt. You’ll reach Heidi’s site if you click on the pretty Hillary Poster in the sidebar.

I’d like to encourage you this Independence Day to help Hillary become independent. She’s asking not for money to pay off the millions of dollars she’s donated to her campaign, but for money to pay the remaining bills to vendors. She kept her promise to us and I’d just like to encourage you to support her hard work and commitment to us.

The second item is for a project started by Heidi and Marc Rubin (great blogger of Tom in Paine). It is called the Denver Project. It’s purpose is to ensure that the continued DNC dirty tricks against Hillary don’t continue into the Denver Convention.

The Denver Group has been formed to insure that the Democratic National Committee respect and carry out the democratic process at the convention in Denver this August by meeting certain specific goals. We will be advocating, and if neccessary pressuring, through purchased mass media as well other accepted avenues, the Democratic National Committee to see to it that these goals and the interests of tens of millions of Democratic voters are met.

Our goals are:

An open convention.

Senator Clinton’s name on the ballot

Speeches allowed by supporters of Senator Clinton on
behalf of her candidacy.

A roll call vote.

No coronation

Our email address: The Denvergroup@Gmail.com

There are HOTLINKS for all of these efforts and blogs in the sidebars.

I really need a new word for everything Barack Obama is doing these days. Obama’s positions change based on what will get him elected (flip-flop flop flips). I’m actually of the opinion he’s a pathological liar. His campaign is in some extraordinary phase of Darwinian Evolution. He’s devolving into something base and beyond trifling.

Today’s issue of the Black Agenda Report: Obama Tells Lies

So, please, try to convince me here, that the Black Agenda Report is being racist. Any time Obama’s lies find the light of day and we discuss them, the rest of us get thwapped with the race card. If you don’t think a white person can call Obama out on his lies, flip flops, gaffes and corporate shilling, then please, go there and take THEIR word for it.

Paul Street tells it like it is. Obama is not just another corporate shill. He’s raised corporate shilling to an artform. One of Obama’s favorite spiels is how his netroots campaign is full of little people giving little bits of money. Street makes it clear to us that Obama’s source of funds is not us little guys. Penny Pritzker, his finance committee chair, has churned up bundlers from a veritable who’s who list of bad guys in the Mortgage Meltdown. GIven Pritzker’s one of the alligators in this swamp, I shouldn’t be too suprised. It is also probably why you NEVER hear Senator Obama talk about some of the biggest rip-offs of poor folks (especially poor minorites and active duty military) these days: Subprime lending, Payday lending, and other predatory practices aimed at the unbanked. This would include making certain no bank branches are available in rural, urban, or other areas where many poor folk live so they are forced to rely on these loans sharks with legal status. If Senator Obama is concerned about inner city blacks, why is he taking so much money from the very people that fleece them every chance they get? This is consistent with his relationship with slumlord Rezko. Let the little people live in slums while Obama gets a sweetheart deal on a mansion and a sideyard.

The top contributors list also explains why Obama’s alternate energy polices frequently include nuclear energy (while he knew NOTHING of the Hanford site while campaigning in Oregon) and ethanol (a really, really inefficient alternative fuel that is a windfall for corporate farming). Obama’s progressive politics appear to be solidly based on the market. The highest bidder wins the Obama treatment.

“Too bad Obama is disproportionately funded by people from the top 1 percent of Americans, who own nearly 40 percent of the nation’s wealth and who account for more than 80 percent of campaign contributions above $250. Through April of 2008, the Campaign Finance Institute reports, Obama received more than $89 million in contributions of $1000 or more, just $8 million less than McCain’s total take ($97.3 million)[1].

No wonder Obama doesn’t want $3 from each American Taxpayer. He can get a lot more for those Wall Street bundlers. For more information from Street, and more lists of lies, please go to the Black Agenda Report. Also, read his list of suggestions on what TRUE campaign finance reform would look like, why Obama lies and how this hurts the future of black political voices, and what authentic progressives and folks interested in poverty issues and providing opportunity to minorities really support. Here’s that link.

Oh, and all you trifilin’ people out there … stop playing that damned race card! You’re de-sensitizing folks to the REAL racial injustices that still exist in this country. Try taking on Subprime lending practices or predatory lending! Try asking for REAL UNIVERSAL health care instead of Obama’s watered down shill. Try equallizing resources among schools! This is just a suggestion from a teacher trying to keep it real in the Ninth WARD of New Orleans.

Like this:

Savage politics has just caught Obama in such an audacious lie that it leaves me wondering if anyone at the Obama campaign has an intact brain cell. What ARE they all on over there? Here’s the link to the piece: http://savagepolitics.com/?p=800 . Here’s a frame of the ad.

Here’s the analysis.

“Is lying and blatant misdirection a ‘Kansas family-value’? By the looks of Obama’s first general election advertisement it is almost a religion. Obama says in his ad that he “extended healthcare for wounded troops that had been neglected” and cites Public Law 110-181as proof of this.

The problem is: Obama didn’t show up to vote that day! The bill passed the senate 91 to 3… WITHOUT Obama’s vote.”

How on earth can you claim you did something that you didn’t do? Especially, let me put this in caps, ESPECIALLY, when it has to do with the men and women who have been wounded in Dubya’s war. How can you put their faces on your ad behind the bold print of a bald faced lie and get up in the morning and face yourself in the mirror? This man didn’t bother to vote for our wounded soldiers and now uses it as his badge of honor.

Cannonfire (source: http://cannonfire.blogspot.com/) reports that DailyKampf is already in gross rationalization mode claiming that Obama supposedly wrote some of it so has a right to claim credit. However, he did not even sponsor or cosponsor this bill.This bill was supported by a huge majority of the senate. They came, they voted. How could he NOT even show up for the vote but now claim he fully supported the bill per this sham of a TV ad? Did he not vote for it because voting present is not an option in the U.S. Senate? Did he hit the wrong button? Was he out to lunch? We know he wasn’t visiting the troops in Iraq or Afghanistan. So WHERE THE FUCK WAS HE for the vote?

Somebody with a press pass on the Obama campaign bus needs to ask that question. Can we at least bring the topic up with some phone calls to Lou Dobbs? Anderson, you were knee deep in unmentionable liquid down here for weeks? Are you brave enough to confront the Grand Possum on this?

What does it take to get the DNC to wake up to what a serious mistake this man is? Trotting out wounded soldiers to support a lie is even beyond the word audacity. Somebody, please, find the alternate universe the Obamatrons have created for themselves and drag them back into reality.

UPDATE: JULY 2, 2008: Obama has removed this portion of his padded resume from the ad.

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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.

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